In Past Show

About Robert Kelly

Drawing on his extensive travels, Robert Kelly’s painted collages contain found print and material from around the world. Kelly has included antique botanical drawings, handwritten notes, small sketches, vintage posters, and signs in his work. To create the ground for his paintings, he lays the re-appropriated paper in long strips to form irregular grids, small squares, and triangles. The repeated application of paper often obscures the printed content beyond recognition. “I have grown fond of the pared-down tools of line, form, and color and the bountiful yield of their juxtapositions, without the need of references or symbolic otherness to give them meaning,” he has said. Having laid the ground, he paints abstract geometric shapes and meandering lines in oil and gouache. In an effort to complicate the notion of a completed work, Kelly has deconstructed many of his canvases and rearranged them into abstract assemblages.